KHBlast - Release Candidate 1.5.5

In the event I do not log in for a month and cannot be contacted, I give blanket permission for STJr and its appointed staff to coordinate and approve the porting and maintenance of my standard SRB2 releases on the SRB2MB, except where stated otherwise. I reserve the right to ask for those ports to be taken down or replaced if I return. You may not edit my work to create other content (such as Original Characters or Remix Stages) unless specified.

During December 2019, I was imagining what it would be like to include elements from the Kingdom Hearts games into SRB2. And now, seven months on, I have finally finished things to the point where I am content to publicly release this mod in its current Release Candidate state. This... is Kingdom Hearts Blast.

Current Version: RC1.5.5


Kingdom Hearts Blast, or KHBlast for short, is a modification for SRB2 which makes things more combat-focused.

Enemies which normally just take a single hit to defeat will (with a few exceptions) no longer take just one hit to be dealt with, but by gaining score (which is KHBlast's XP system) and levelling up, you can deal more damage with each hit. But this goes both ways, as Sonic and company now have their own health which allows them to take more hits than they'd otherwise be able to take.


There are 6 difficulties in KHBlast, of which you can choose one at the start of a new game through the Station of Awakening. Each one modifies the damage you take, the max HP you have and/or the HP of your foes. You start with just Beginner, Standard and Proud, but on clearing the game you can try out Critical or even the (in)famous EXP Zero difficulty. And using the Ultimate Mode cheat allows you to access the hidden Ultimate Difficulty.



You don't just gain stats by levelling up, however. By defeating bosses and collecting Chaos Emeralds, you can improve your HP and/or RP so that you can take more hits or use more Magic.

Speaking of Magic, KHBlast has a command menu system. You can use PageUp or PageDown to scroll up or down the command list, Custom 2 to switch between Magic and Items, and Custom 1 to use the selected Item or Magic spell.

As of RC1, KHBlast has the following spells:

• Fire - Fires a fireball which deals decent magical damage
• Thunder - Unleashes a lighting bolt which hits all targets within a given distance
• Cure - Uses between 2 and 10 RP to heal you and nearby allies
• Aero - Creates a Whirlwind Shield, or upgrades an Electric Shield to a Thundercoin Shield
• Haste - Grants Super Sneakers to the user
• Revive - Uses 6RP to revive nearby downed allies, or 20RP to grant an additional Auto-Life as well as reviving nearby allies

Special Stages remain the same in KHBlast, but you will be notified whenever you pick up a Special Stage Token (which becomes a Drive Token once you get all 7 emeralds) just like you would when getting an Item dropped from a foe.



Finally, if you manage to make it to the final battle with all 7 Emeralds, Black Eggman will be stronger than normal, taking more hits to defeat... but in return, you start off with 7 units of Drive Charge. And with Drive Charge and all the Emeralds, you can access the Drive Form - which is basically the Super Transformation, with a full unit of charge being equal to 50 Rings.



KHBlast also changes up the character select menu, giving details about the character's starting stats and their Drive Form, as well as a little tip. Due to this, if a custom character wants to have their starting stats shown in the character select screen, I would recommend an alternative version (with kh at the end of the prefix, so it would be like CLkh_Buttnick-v1.pk3) with the altered PlayerText. This would also allow them to add their profile sprite to the game, akin to the Sonic ones which I have attached as examples by adding them to the khheadpatch table, which will eventually allow for faces to be displayed based on the current state of the player: Normal, Low Health, KOed, Super or Special. (Right now, only Normal and Low Health are coded in to work)



Thanks to everyone who had helped out with it, both past and present. I might not remember everyone who did so, but if I do, I'll make sure to put you down as a contributor towards this.

Also, maybe consider joining the SonicD Discord server for future updates for KHBlast?

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by Sryder13

It'd be awesome to see some completely custom levels for something like that one day that put more emphasis on taking down enemies to get XP, rather than most of it coming from end of level bonuses. :D

Watch FieryExplosion take on KHBlast RC 1.5.2 as Amy in Critical Mode here!

[Latius]

Version History:

RC 1 - First MB release
RC 1.1 - Fixes a few bugs which rendered RC1 unplayable
RC 1.2 - Added some functionality with SRB2 Dungeon Crawler
RC 1.3 - Fixed a few bugs, and improved functionality with Dungeon Crawler
RC 1.3.1 - Added something which RC 1.3 should have had, as well as finally fixing the suspicious statue Facestabber HP stuff.
RC 1.3.2 - Slight tweak to deal with levels with a Countdown Time Over condition
RC 1.4 - Quality of life improvements
RC 1.5 - Difficulty Tweaks, Station tweaks and other QoL improvements
RC 1.5.1 - Fixes a few bugs which I missed out when I was doing the QoL improvements.
RC 1.5.2 - Fixes a fatal bug in RC 1.5.1 which broke the Station of Awakening.
RC 1.5.3 - Attempts to reduce lag, while adding some modified Starpost Rewards
RC 1.5.4 - Fixes a 'bug' where continuing reset your level to 1 (oh no!) as well as a few minor tweaks
RC 1.5.5 - Who the heck nerfed Black Eggman in the Super Attack? Well, that nerf is undone, giving him his full health as originally intended.

Video Showcases:


RC 1.4 Sonic&Tails Standard Mode preview by BlueBlurTV


RC 1.5.2 Amy All Emeralds Critical Mode Run by FieryExplosion

[MellowJacket]

After going back and forth a few times and getting some more bug fixes done, this is now live! I really enjoyed what I played of this, and I did a full campaign playthrough with all emeralds to test it.

This is very interesting and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this for any more updates too.

[KobaBeach]

Originally Posted by Latius

Finally, if you manage to make it to the final battle with all 7 Emeralds, Black Eggman will be stronger than normal,

i thought this was kingdom hearts not romancing saga

But seriously this looks really interesting, turning a 3D platformer into an ARPG? I'm intrigued.

EDIT: Just played a bit of Greenflower 1 and I like the idea. I'd tone down the amount of EXP you need to earn to reach the next level though. It'd be neat if we got a few "light RPG" level packs out of this. A lot of the dungeons and towns would be reappropriated as Hangout spots but shou ga nai I suppose. I feel like a better combo system for rapidly dispatching low level mooks would be fine, like Sora's base combo. Something like Shadow's homing attack combo from 06 would be nice for Sonic, maybe Tails' Rhythm Badge dance, Knuckles could get a punch combo... As is the spin dash feels a bit insufficient. Not saying this mod is bad, far from it, it has a lot of effort and love put into it. These are just minor nitpicks of mine.

[Latius]

Originally Posted by KobaBeach

i thought this was kingdom hearts not romancing saga

Hey, I had to give the obligatory Super Sonic true final boss, you know.

Edit: Well, I will admit that it's mainly due to just how much EXP you can gain from Special Stages - and I will admit that I do want to add in a combo system like that, which will possibly be in a later update.

[Darkboy64]

I absolutely adore this mod, even though I've never actually played one of the Kingdom Hearts games. Is there any possibility of a level pack friendly version of this?

[Daviroll_Limit]

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
this is amazing! i wasn't aware that this was possible!
ok, i'm getting too hyped, ahem... can't wait to see more characters compatible with this, i would love it

[WellDoneSnake]

I'm a big Kingdom Hearts fan so seeing a snippet of this in srb2 a while back was huge surprise to me so I'm glad that it's finally been released!

I will note that I often opt for the harder difficulties of any KH game, the same goes for this mod however I do wish the experienced gained from your beginning battles would be just a little bit more than the current amount gained.

[Latius]

Originally Posted by Darkboy64

Is there any possibility of a level pack friendly version of this?

Well, for one, there is the khBlastlevelinfo table which can be accessed and modified. And I can indeed make it a bit more level pack friendly.

In fact, I've decided to add in two new things for the level header for RC 1.4: LUA.superboss and LUA.finalboss. The former can be either set to 1 or 2 - if 1, then it only toggles the Super bonus (and thus the increase in HP as well as the starting Drive) if the player already has all 7 Emeralds, otherwise it counts as if LUA.finalboss is true. If 2, however, it will make sure that you have all the Emeralds before giving the bonus.

Also, already in the mod, there's LUA.RALevel - this allows you to decide on the starting Level for a stage when taken on in Record Attack mode.

[little guy*]

Haha, SRB2 is a rpg now. Oh boy.

[Emerald-Night]

This mod is pretty great, but here's something that i noticed:

On record attack boss has the same HP like on singleplayer, which makes it impossible to get the time emblem. I tried it while playing as Sonic, but if i couldn't make it to the record, then i'm not sure if i can do it with Fang.

[Latius]

Emerald-Night, I know about that. I know it won't be possible to beat some of the bosses with the timeframe given in base SRB2, and if I knew how to edit the time emblems, I'd do so. But with how KHBlast is right now, Emblems are not the main focus.

[Emerald-Night]

I think some command MapTime can help to solve this problem. Just saying.

But of course it needs SLADE for this.

[Zippy_Zolton]

Ah yes, the true final boss.




This mod is really nice, but I think the combat is boring and could use some revamping to make the player think more. For most of the enemies, it's hold spin until their health bar is gone. In a few cases, there's actually bits of the vanilla level design where there's actually an entertaining combination of enemies, especially CEZ. Also, I think some of the enemies have too much health, like the Egg Guards.

[Latius]

Originally Posted by Zippy_Zolton

Ah yes, the true final boss.

Attachment 33875


This mod is really nice, but I think the combat is boring and could use some revamping to make the player think more. For most of the enemies, it's hold spin until their health bar is gone. In a few cases, there's actually bits of the vanilla level design where there's actually an entertaining combination of enemies, especially CEZ. Also, I think some of the enemies have too much health, like the Egg Guards.

Yeah, gonna need to nerf the Spin Dash some. I think that if it's fully charged, but you're still camping with it, the next hit would pierce through the Spin.

As for the Egg Guards having too much health... I will consider nerfing their HP some.

[Latius]

KHBlast is now in RC 1.5!

Some tweaks have been made to the XP curve and also to Sonic, giving him the Homing Thok instead of his standard Thok. Also, spindashing for too long will not protect you from enemies.

Custom Character Update part 1:
1) healthdata and ringdata are exposed to allow people to add to those tables using Lua.
2) Stats have been granted for the Werehog, Advance Cream and Eggman

A bit of progress has been made on making tutorials and the like, with some custom help screens explaining the controls and such

Oh, and the Station of Awakening now has a snazzy new floor, thanks to LonelyFoxz.

[FieryExplosion]

As a fan of Kingdom Hearts, it made me happy to see this mod finally got released. It's not perfect—combat isn't the most engaging, bosses can be too beefy sometimes, and damage was a fair bit negligible (though it's worth noting I played this on RC 1.3)—but overall, this is a great way to re-experience SRB2.

I agree that EXP could probably be re-balanced a little though. And I kind of wish Critical Mode was available from the outset, but that's just a personal preference.

Keep up the good work! (Also, thanks for using my sprites.)

[Emerald-Night]

Thankfully that we can get the time emblem now. Horewer while getting the third and seven chaos emeralds i keep lagging. Same with entire Deep Sea zone, Castle Eggman Act 2 and maybe in some levels.

This might be a problem for someone who tries to unlock the secrets. Maybe it's some sort of bug or maybe it's because of my PC.

[Snowy]

Werehog, when using his spinning attack, gains no exp from defeated enemies and seems to ignore stats.

[Latius]

Originally Posted by Emerald-Night

Thankfully that we can get the time emblem now. Horewer while getting the third and seven chaos emeralds i keep lagging. Same with entire Deep Sea zone, Castle Eggman Act 2 and maybe in some levels.

This might be a problem for someone who tries to unlock the secrets. Maybe it's some sort of bug or maybe it's because of my PC.

It's possibly the PC. Although I don't know why those stages cause more lag than normal.

Originally Posted by Snowy

Werehog, when using his spinning attack, gains no exp from defeated enemies and seems to ignore stats.

If he gains no XP, that means he's not gaining any Score - and I think it might be either due to his high Strength which makes it seem like that, or something's wrong with Wearhog's own code. I'll need to double check to see what it might be.

Edit: Yep, the spinning attack does seem to not grant Score, and thus it doesn't gain XP. This is a bug to the Werehog, not to KHBlast.